Have you ever had something ruined by a bad ending? Maybe you thought you’d found a new favourite Netflix series, only to have it crash and burn in the final episode. Or maybe you’ve found yourself thinking positively about an experience, even if you only really enjoyed it right at the very end.

Well, as it turns out, we’re all prone to placing this sort of emphasis on an ending, and there’s a scientific reason for it, too.

According to new research published in The Journal of Neuroscience, “humans tend to assign disproportionate weight to the later part of an experience”. This has to do with the fact that we process the ending of an event differently to the event as a whole.

Psychology: people put too much emphasis on an ending, and it’s having this unexpected effect